Why are men so comfortable shaming Katrina Kaif's postpartum appearance?

Katrina Kaif has always been considered one of the most conventionally beautiful women in Bollywood. And it's not up for debate. She has spent years being cast as the Bollywood beauty, appearing on magazine covers, red carpets, and pretty much every unofficial list of women deemed exceptionally easy on the eyes. So you’d think, by now, she might be allowed to simply exist in her own body without the internet jumping in to shame her for her changing body. But apparently not. Because the second a woman’s body changes, particularly after she has had a baby, the unsolicited opinions come flying in. And somehow, men seem especially confident that their two cents are absolutely necessary.

To give you some context, Kaif gave birth to her son in November 2025 and has since then been busy enjoying the newness of motherhood. For months, fans and well-wishers have claimed to miss seeing her on social media and in public and have poured out their love to catch one glimpse of the glowing mother. And when she finally did, she was met with nothing but scrutiny over her postpartum appearance. 

Kaif’s appearance at filmmaker Kuku Kohli’s funeral in August was one of the first times she was seen publicly since becoming a mother, and the comments about her appearance started almost immediately. Then came the Ambani family’s Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations, where the conversation resurfaced all over again. Because apparently, when a woman’s body changes after having a baby, simply seeing her isn’t enough. We need to discuss it, dissect it, compare it to what it looked like before, and, for some reason, decide whether we approve. What’s baffling is that so many of these comments came from men who seemed to have absolutely no interest in understanding why her body might look different in the first place.

But why are men so comfortable throwing opinions around about a woman’s appearance, especially when that woman has just had a baby? And it gets worse. Among the faceless men shaming Kaif’s postpartum appearance was a doctor, who seemed particularly offended by the fact that she looked different after giving birth, going so far as to claim that she looked like Vicky Kaushal’s mother.

A doctor, of all people, should understand that pregnancy and childbirth are not exactly a weekend makeover. A woman’s body spends nine months growing an entire human being. It changes physically and hormonally, and then it has to recover from childbirth while she is also adjusting to caring for a newborn. The idea that she should simply “bounce back” because a few months have passed is ridiculous. Her body has just done something enormous. It needs time to recover, and there is no universal deadline by which that recovery is supposed to happen.

And yet, there is this bizarre expectation that women should be grateful for motherhood while making sure it leaves as little visible evidence as possible. We celebrate pregnancy right up until the point that it changes a woman’s body, and then suddenly everyone wants to know when she is going to get it back. But get what back, exactly? The body she had before she grew a whole person inside it? The one that didn't just spend nine months doing something men will never experience themselves?

Kaif is hardly the first Bollywood woman to be subjected to this kind of scrutiny. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan went through a remarkably similar experience after giving birth to her daughter Aaradhya in 2011. And mind you, this was a woman who had won Miss World and spent years being described as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Yet within months of becoming a mother, the conversation around her shifted to her weight. Photographs of her were dissected, her face and body became the subject of public debate, and she was criticised for not returning to her pre-pregnancy figure quickly enough.

Kareena Kapoor Khan has spoken about the same physical reality from her own experience. After giving birth to Taimur, she recalled looking in the mirror and seeing herself as “scarred, chubby, puffy, tired”. She has also spoken openly about swollen feet, dark circles, exhaustion, hormonal changes, and simply not feeling like herself during and after pregnancy. And yet, women like them have repeatedly been expected to maintain the same polished, camera-ready version of themselves through pregnancy, childbirth and everything that follows. Apparently, being naturally puffy, tired, swollen, or heavier after giving birth is acceptable only when nobody can see it.

That is what makes this conversation so exhausting. We have somehow normalised the idea that women’s bodies are public property, open for inspection the moment they deviate from whatever version of “beautiful” we have decided they should be. And the rules are particularly cruel after motherhood. A woman can spend nine months growing a baby, go through labour or a C-section, lose sleep, feed a newborn, recover physically and emotionally, and still be expected to worry about whether her face looks puffy in a photograph.

How are we still doing this in 2026? How has there been so little shame attached to saying these things about a woman who has just given birth? Why is the first instinct still to ask what happened to her body instead of understanding what her body has just done?

Maybe that is the part that needs to change. Not how quickly Katrina Kaif gets back to her old body. Not whether Aishwarya Rai Bachchan loses the weight. Not whether Kareena Kapoor Khan looks “good” without makeup. The problem is the fact that we keep thinking women owe us that version of themselves in the first place. A postpartum body is not a before-and-after picture waiting to happen. It is not a public referendum. And it certainly does not need a man, a doctor, or the internet at large to decide whether it is acceptable.

Image credit: IMDb 

Also read: Where do Indians get their audacity to comment on bodies?

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